Global warming skeptics are seizing on portions of the messages as evidence that scientists are colluding and warping data to fit the theory of global warming, but researchers say the e-mails are being taken out of context and just show scientists engaged in frank discussion.

The waters have been so altered by climate change and melting sea ice that plankton, shellfish and fish may have trouble building their protective shells and skeletons, an international team reports Friday in the journal Science. "

“The list of what is on the table is rather long,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the sponsor of the meeting, which runs from Dec. 7 to 18 in Copenhagen. "

Yet a growing part of the company’s business is being devoted to something decidedly unindustrial: edible walls — metal panels filled with soil and seeds and hung vertically.

The Navy’s Arctic Roadmap, written by the recently launched Navy Task Force Climate Change (TFCC), opens with an acknowledgment that worldwide temperatures are on the rise — especially up north. “The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. While significant uncertainty exists in projections for Arctic ice extent, the current scientific consensus indicates the Arctic may experience nearly ice-free summers sometime in the 2030s,” the document notes. "

Previous analysis of ice cores has shown that the climate consists of ice ages and warmer interglacial periods roughly every 100,000 years. This new investigation shows temperature 'spikes' within some of the interglacial periods over the last 340,000 years. This suggests Antarctic temperature shows a high level of sensitivity to greenhouse gases at levels similar to those found today. "

But climate change poses a different sort of challenge for Mr. Donohue. Many of the chamber’s big-business members are deeply split on the issue, with some standing to profit from an economy moving away from reliance on fossil fuels, while others could see devastating increases in costs.

On 7 December, world leaders and climate change negotiators will meet in Copenhagen to discuss the future of our planet. As the debate intensifies, the New Statesman's panel of environmental experts have chosen their heroes and villains - politicians, activists, companies and institutions."

CLIMATE CHANGE was at the top of President Obama's agenda in China Tuesday, just three weeks before representatives from 192 countries meet in Copenhagen for a much-anticipated international climate conference. And he came tantalizingly close to saying what the rest of the world has been waiting years to hear: that next month the United States, the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, will finally come to the table with a specific carbon reduction target. "

The oceans play a key role in regulating climate, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air. Now, the first year-by-year accounting of this mechanism during the industrial era suggests the oceans are struggling to keep up with rising emissions -- a finding with potentially wide implications for future climate. The study appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature."

A self-amplifying effect presently sustains monsoon winds, but it could also disrupt the circulation over land and sea. The periodical rainfall could stop from one season to another or for months within seasons. High air pollution could lead to the disruption, researchers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Online Early Edition. Global warming increases the risk of abrupt monsoon transitions from high-precipitation to dry periods. "

He said: "We probably lost about 20 to 30 yards along the coast. I was born and brought up here and I'd like to see it remaining. I'm really worried about it because this is all that's holding back the Atlantic."

The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions."

Emissions rose by 29% between 2000 and 2008, says the Global Carbon Project. All of that growth came in developing countries, but a quarter of it came through production of goods for consumption in industrialised nations. "